


like a distant star (I simply cannot hold)

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Dark Swan, F/F, s7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-14 03:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11774445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: Dark Swan/Season 7 fusion. Every night, Emma Swan lurks outside of Roni’s bar, her eyes wistful even as her words are sharp and cruel. Lucy insists that she’s the Dark One– that she should be avoided at all costs, that she’s the one who cursed them into this town– but Roni still watches the window each night, waiting.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [like a distant star (I cannot hold) fan art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11937969) by [curiouslycurious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiouslycurious/pseuds/curiouslycurious). 



> This is like....if S7 happened shortly after the 4b finale, when Emma takes the dagger. Dark Swan goes a bit differently, and so does Henry's trip through the realms. Mostly, I just wanted to write Roni and Emma. This is a tiny little story that I wrote midway through August, thought 'hey, why not add to Supernova instead of publishing right now?' and here we are. :)
> 
> I want to thank Steph for the initial thread about this concept that we wrote together, and for so kindly agreeing to let me write a story based on it! (I am looking forward to seeing your interpretation of it too!!) And to my supremely talented artist curiouslycurious, who picked up this fic super last minute. I'm so excited to see what you've done with it!!! And thanks to the Supernova mods for being rockstars and organizing all of this in the first place, I love you guys. <3
> 
> The title and excerpt below are from _Winter Song_ by Sara Bareilles.

_They say that things just cannot grow_  
_Beneath the winter snow_  
_Or so I have been told_  
_They say we're buried far_  
_Just like a distant star_  
_I simply cannot hold  
_ _Is_ _love alive?_  
_Is love alive?_  
_Is love alive?_

 

It’s 11:00 PM and Lucy is still missing. Roni scrubs the counter again, then again, looking up to give a vague smile at anyone in the bar who might sense the tension emanating from its proprietor. This is long past bedtime on an ordinary night. On an ordinary night at 9:00, Jacinda stands and Lucy says _already?_ and they head upstairs to the apartment Roni shares with them.

 

Tonight, it’s two hours later and Jacinda is driving through Storybrooke, calling every contact she has and frantically searching for her daughter. Roni turns, casually lifts her phone, and calls with her face even. “Any luck?”

 

“Nothing.” Jacinda is curt, her voice barely controlled. “I’ve combed every inch of this town and called in every favor I can and I’ve found nothing. The bus driver who’d stopped just outside Storybrooke is off duty until morning. We have nothing.”

 

“We’ll find her,” Roni says reassuringly. They've been roommates for as long as she can remember, though she can't quite recall how it had come to be or how young Lucy had been when Jacinda had arrived. She just knows that it's been years, and Lucy’s never done anything so reckless before.

 

And yes, Lucy’s always been a little more adventurous than Jacinda had liked, exploring every nook and cranny of town regardless of how dangerous it might be. She's fearless, staring down even Swan when she comes to the bar to collect the rent. And now, apparently, she's finally gone somewhere she won't return from.

 

 _Or maybe she will._ The door to the bar opens, and Lucy walks in, eyes bright and surveying the bar as though she’s taking it all in differently. “She’s here,” Roni says, and Jacinda says, “ _What?_ ”

 

“She just walked in.” The phone clicks off and Roni stares at the man who’d followed Lucy inside.

 

She knows him. That had been her first impression. She knows him, and she doesn't know how, because she's never seen him before in her life. She can feel the shiver run through her, the sudden warmth, and she swallows and stares and blinks back what feels like sudden tears. He's a _stranger_ , but she feels such a last sense of loss around him that she can hardly breathe. He’s looking around the bar, perfectly in sync with Lucy, but his eyes are dark and confused.

 

“Lucy,” Roni says, and her voice is hoarse. The man looks at her, and he breathes in sharply and curls his fingers to his palm, his brow furrowing. Roni tears her eyes away from his with effort, feeling his gaze burning into her. “What do you think you're doing? Your mother’s been searching town all day.”

 

Lucy tucks her book under her arm. “I found my dad,” she says simply, and Roni turns back and gapes at the man.

 

“You're…” Maybe that's why he looks so familiar, why there's something about him that draws Roni in. But Lucy takes after her mother so acutely that it _can’t_ , it doesn't–

 

The man is watching her, his brow creased and his eyes still so dark. “We’ve met before, haven't we?”

 

Lucy squints up at them. “I don't know,” she says. “Roni isn't in my book. Just you and Mom.”

 

“Roni,” the man repeats, shaking his head slightly as though something is wrong. “No…”

 

Roni swallows. There's a lump in her throat she can't seem to get rid of. “Yes,” she says, sticking out her hand. “Roni Meyers. And you are?”

 

“Henry Mills.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. _Henry Mills_. Maybe he’d been in the bar before. Storybrooke doesn't get many strangers, but if he'd been here with Jacinda, it might be why his name seems to reverberate through her and never find purchase. It doesn't explain the way his gaze settles into her retinas, burned there for eternity. “Look, I don't even know if I have a kid. She just showed up at my doorstep with that book and insisted that I was her dad. I don't want any trouble.”

 

The book. Roni sighs. “Lucy, what is this book?”

 

“Mrs. Blanchard gave it to me,” Lucy says, tugging it closer. “You won't understand. It's about my parents.” She looks back to Henry pleadingly. “You were fleeing the Dark One through the realms and you and my mom fell in love! It’s the truth! And then there was a curse and we were split up because you're the author-– you wrote the book–”

 

“I write novels, not picture book fairytales,” Henry says, looking baffled. “I don't think…” He glances up at Roni. “Look, I should just go.”

 

“No,” Roni says, perhaps too hastily, and Henry bites his lip– she has the sudden, absurd urge to say something ridiculous like _keep that up and you'll leave a permanent mark_. “No,” she says, forcing her voice to remain even. “If Lucy thinks something’s true, she isn't going to budge on it. She’ll be back...where are you from?”

 

“New York,” Henry says, looking a little sheepish. “It’s been a long drive back. She wouldn’t give me her number, or I’d have called.”

 

There’s still that irritating _thing_ about him, lingering at the edges of her consciousness, that makes her trust him implicitly. It’s short-sighted and naive, and she’s smarter than this, but she hesitates, and her heart still thumps too hard when she meets his eyes. “I have an extra apartment upstairs,” she says slowly. “I’ve been trying to rent it out for years, but my landlord is pretty focused on making my life miserable and that includes blocking me from making any extra income. Why don’t you stay here tonight?” Jacinda is going to _kill_ her. “If I know Lucy, she’ll be right back at your place in the morning, demanding that you listen to her this time.”

 

Henry shrugs, glancing down at Lucy uncertainly and then back to Roni. There's a longing in his eyes, wistful but still confused, and Roni should be absolutely terrified of that. Instead, she hopes desperately that it'll be enough for him to stay. “I guess…my work is with me, anyway,” he says, jabbing a thumb out at his car. “I could stay.”

 

* * *

 

Jacinda is less than pleased when she finds out. “You invited this man to _stay here_?” she demands. “Some…sperm donor who got his hands on my kid? Are you _insane_?”

 

The bar is closed for the night, and Henry Mills hasn’t emerged from the apartment since he’d headed up there. Roni keeps looking up instinctively, glancing at the stairs. Lucy is in bed at last, Jacinda locking the door to the apartment like they’d never before, and she still looks hollow-eyed and stressed.

 

This admission isn’t helping, that’s for sure. “I’m a bartender, Jacinda. I know people,” Roni reminds her. “And there’s something about this guy…he’s a good guy.”

 

“I’m a sheriff, Roni,” Jacinda mimics her. “I know people. And that man should be locked up for kidnapping my daughter.”

 

Roni passes her a drink, and Jacinda downs it, her shoulders dropping wearily. “Is he her father?” she finally ventures.

 

“I don’t know. You know that…everything’s a little fuzzy from back then. I wasn’t in a great place and I must have been on some kind of bender before I wound up here.” She chews on her lip. “But yeah, Lucy’s birth certificate says Henry Mills on it. So at some point, I did know enough about him to put that down.”

 

“She found her birth certificate?”

 

“She ordered a copy under my name.” Jacinda barks out a laugh. “Sometimes I’m pretty sure I’ve bitten off more than I can chew by trying to raise a kid like Lucy on my own. Well, not on my own.” She smiles for the first time tonight, a tentative peace offering between them. “I do trust your judgment. I don’t know if I trust Henry Mills.”

 

“That’s fair,” he says from the staircase that winds behind the bar, and Roni feels the melancholy return, the odd mix of joy and loss that accompanies Henry Mills. “I don’t think I’d trust me, either. But she’s a good kid. I didn’t mean to intrude.” He offers her a weary smile. “Is the bar closed?”

 

“Not for us,” Roni says briskly. “What’ll it be?” She mixes drinks for both of them, watching from the corner of her eye how they exchange wary glances that hold. Jacinda’s head tilts, and Henry’s lips curl into an unconscious almost-smile. Maybe there is something there– or had been, even if Jacinda can’t remember it. She’s still going with her initial instinct about Henry.

 

 _Henry, Henry_ … The name echoes through her mind again, and she sneaks another glance at him. She doesn’t know a Henry. She’s never known a Henry. But she knows this man, even if he’s a stranger.

 

She glances toward the window of the store in an attempt to give them some privacy as Henry says tentatively, “So, what’s the deal with Lucy’s book?”

 

“She has an overactive imagination,” Jacinda says wryly. “This isn’t the first time she’s gone missing and we’ve found her off on some secret mission. Though it is the first time she left town for it.” She runs a hand through her hair. “She’s grounded for the next decade.”

 

Henry laughs. “Does that work?”

 

“On Lucy? Not as well as it should.” Jacinda heaves a sigh. “So you’re a writer, you said?”

 

“Yeah. I’ve written a novel. _Have A Heart._ Small-town sheriff and mayor team up to investigate a serial killer.” He calls up the Amazon listing on his phone and passes it to them. “I’m in the middle of writing the sequel.”

 

“I’m a small-town sheriff,” Jacinda says thoughtfully, and Henry looks at her as though he’s seeing her for the first time.

 

“So you are,” he says, and Roni watches them with something tightening in her throat again.

 

She blinks and looks away, back to the window. The street outside the bar is well-lit, light filtering in upstairs when the curtains aren’t closed, and the figure who walks toward the door is all in black, silhouetted against the light. Their eyes meet through the glass, and Roni’s lips purse together in displeasure. “We have company,” she announces, just as the door slides open and Swan saunters in.

 

“Oh, look. A late-night party. What have I told you about selling alcohol after hours?”

 

Roni tilts her head. _This_ she can do. This leaves her more grounded than any conversation with a familiar stranger will. “Nothing legal, that’s for sure. You can’t evict me for drinking.”

 

Swan scoffs. “Don’t try me, Meyers. I could evict you over far less.” She never turns to the other people at the bar, Jacinda sighing into her drink and Henry watching her with a creased brow. It’s always like this with them. Swan’s personal vendetta against Roni stretches only to Roni herself, and she’s barely ever looked twice at Jacinda or Lucy. “I heard you lost the kid this afternoon.”

 

And now, it seems, that may change.

 

“We found her,” Jacinda says coolly. Swan doesn’t spare her a glance. “Roni didn’t lose her.”

 

Swan’s lip twists. “Of course not. _Roni_ would never lose a child.” She glares at Roni with sudden intensity. Roni’s never understood why it is that Swan hates her so terribly– why Swan seems to go out of her way to pick fights with her and does everything in her power to make Roni miserable– but there are times when Roni fights back, when adrenaline courses through her veins and she feels stronger, suddenly. Powerful and alive, as though only the battle sustains her. Life in Storybrooke feels like going through the motions, day in and day out, and Swan is…the only one who ever seems to change. Roni is drawn to that change like a moth to a flame.

 

“Children don’t run away from me, Ms. Swan,” Roni shoots back, and Swan’s glare loses some of its heat. She looks oddly lost for a moment, drifting in nothingness, but Roni doesn’t back down. “It’s a strange little quirk of being a decent human being instead of a…whatever you are.” She gestures vaguely at Swan, watching as her face darkens.

 

“ _Whatever I am_ is the woman who owns this bar,” Swan says coldly. “And you’d best keep a better eye on that little girl you’re so attached to. If I find her digging through the back of my pawn shop again, you won’t enjoy the consequences.”

 

 _Digging through the back of the pawn shop_. Lucy’s been at it again, it seems, and crossing Swan is more dangerous even than running to New York. Roni straightens, her eyes flashing. “Was that a threat?”

 

There are lines even Swan won't cross, and threatening a child is one of them. Roni had thought, anyway. Swan had arrived at the bar on the day that Jacinda had moved in (when had that been? How many years? Months?) and demanded answers about her and Lucy, but she’d never once contested the sublease.

 

But today, Swan is in a mood, and she doesn't answer the question, just offers a cruel smirk. Jacinda clutches her glass, white-knuckled. Henry looks disoriented, eyes flickering to Roni and Jacinda and then back at Swan in marked disappointment. Roni shakes her head, disgust beating out the adrenaline, and says, “How the hell did you get like this?”

 

Swan’s face darkens and she storms out the door.

 

* * *

 

Henry Mills stays. They keep the new tenant quiet, off the books where Swan can't take issue with him. Jacinda sighs when Roni asks her about it. “I don't know. If it keeps Lucy from starting up with Swan, maybe it's worth it.” But she smiles more around Henry and Henry is thoroughly charmed by her, and Roni notes with amusement that she’s watching young love, after all.

 

Lucy is ecstatic. “They're going to break the curse with true love’s kiss,” she says, skipping beside Roni as they head back from the grocery. Roni does drinks, not food, but Jacinda is always willing to make dinner if Roni does the shopping. “So Mama is Cinderella, right?”

 

“So you've told me,” Roni says dryly. “Cinderella runs away from a dreadful prince, finds an author named Henry in the woods and tries to get him to rewrite her story. You really think a Disney princess can grow up to be the badass detective your mom is?”

 

Lucy grins at her. “They're much better when they're feminist. Mama taught me that.”

 

“Where’d you get this book, anyway? I asked Mrs. Nolan,” Roni says, raising her eyebrows at Lucy. “She says she never planned any class book club for advanced readers, but she thinks it's a great idea. She was making new plans as we spoke.”

 

Lucy’s eyes flicker away from hers guiltily. “Lacey gave it to me,” she tries, and Roni tilts her head and waits. “Okay, I found it in the pawn shop. I was just looking around! I thought Ms. Swan might be up to something and I was right!” she says triumphantly. “She's the _Dark One_ , Roni. She took all the happy endings away.”

 

Roni laughs. “That does sound like Ms. Swan,” she concedes. “But Lucy, you can't do things like that. You know Ms. Swan owns the bar, and she's always looking for an excuse to screw things up for me– which means for your mom.”

 

Lucy looks down. As bright as she is– as uncontrollable as she can be– she does love her mother more than anything. “You’ve got to be more careful,” Roni says gently. “Get to know your dad. Join Mrs. Nolan’s book club. Find things to do that aren't…Dark Ones and curses. Stay away from Ms. Swan.”

 

Speak of the devil herself. Swan is striding down the block, her eyes distant, and she looks– less angry than usual, at least. More perturbed in a way that Roni can’t quite describe. She’d mastered the many faces of Swan long ago, before she can remember, and this one feels dangerously close to the almost wistful one that Roni sees sometimes at night.

 

At night, when the bar is still open and Swan saunters past it, pausing at the window, Roni can feel her eyes on her, like a gaze burning into her with its intensity. She’s careful never to look up and catch her gaze, lest Swan storm in and start a fight in front of the customers, but she peers in the reflection of the window while she cleans a glass and watches Swan’s eyes, distant and longing and sad.

 

Roni isn’t naive enough to believe that every nasty piece of work out there is troubled, but she wonders despite herself about Swan sometimes.

 

Lucy, oblivious to the approaching menace, walks side-by-side with Roni, swinging her bag back and forth as she moves. Roni tears her eyes from Swan to watch Lucy instead. As far as she knows, Swan and Lucy have never actually spoken. Roni is determined to keep it that way. “I wish I knew who you were,” Lucy says thoughtfully. “You’d have to be someone super good. Maybe you were my mom’s mother before Dr. Tremaine–”

 

Her swinging bag slams into Swan’s leg, and something inside it shatters. Lucy gasps as red liquid seeps from the bag and down Swan’s leg, looking up in horror. Instinctively, Roni pulls her back, out of range of Swan’s anger. “I’m sorry!” Lucy says, frantic. “I’m sorry! Please don’t cast a curse on me!”

 

“ _Lucy!_ ” Swan stares at them. Roni’s sure she’s imagining that she looks just as frightened as Lucy is, stumbling back with tomato sauce dripping down black leather to her shoe. “Sorry, Ms. Swan,” Roni says, crouching easily and tearing open the package of napkins they’d bought. They’re colorful and say _congratulations!_ on them, and Roni dabs at Swan’s leg until Swan pulls away, looking sickened at her touch.

 

“Get up,” she orders, backing away. “Just– just stay away from me.”

 

Lucy shrinks back and Roni steps in front of her, napkins still crumpled in her hand. “It was an accident,” she says tersely.

 

Swan turns her eyes onto Lucy and Roni’s eyes narrow, remembering Swan’s last threat. Swan reaches for Lucy and Roni clears her throat, ready to start a fight in the middle of Main Street, and then Swan says, “You’ll need a new bag.” Her voice is…not quite kind, but subdued. Lucy stares at her, wide-eyed. Swan tilts her head. “Because yours is full of glass?” she prods. Her voice gets a touch sharper. “Your mom’s girlfriend might be useless, but I don’t think you should be walking around with a bag that could cut you.”

 

Roni scoffs. “Don’t act like you’re suddenly human,” she says darkly. Swan gives her a tight, false smile.

 

Lucy says, “I’ll ask Granny for a bag!” quickly, making a beeline for the diner they’d just passed. Her bag remains on the floor by Roni’s foot, and Swan’s face returns to a familiar sneer.

 

“Jacinda isn’t my girlfriend,” Roni says. She doesn’t know why she does– why it matters at all that Swan knows that. Maybe that had been the only reasoning why Swan hadn’t started up with her for getting a roommate in the first place, and she’s just making things worse for them. “She’s a kid.”

 

Swan barks out a laugh. “Right. So you just…find some random woman and child and decide to build a new family with them out of nowhere? For no particular reason? Bullshit.”

 

“New family?” Roni echoes, bewildered. “What the hell are you talking about?” Swan just glares at her, and Roni says again, “She’s a kid. A single mom with a kid of her own. Jacinda needed a place, and I needed the spare cash to afford my place after you jacked up the prices. That’s all.”

 

Swan stares at her, lips pressed together thinly. “So you took her in for the money?” Realization dawns over her face. “No, you took her in because she was a single mom with a kid. For _fuck’s_ sake.” She whirls around, apparently infuriated, and then whirls back. “And what was the kid talking about, I’d put a curse on her? What are any of you talking about?” Roni shrugs, still caught for a loop at the many changing moods of Swan. Swan clenches her fists. “I don’t want to know. I’m– I don’t want to know.”

 

She stalks down the street, this time sidestepping Lucy as she steps out of the diner. She pauses as Lucy says something to her, and she says something back before she walks on, fists still clenched.

 

“What was that?” Roni says, eyeing Swan warily as Lucy joins her again.

 

Lucy shrugs. “I said sorry again. She told me to call her Emma. She’s a lot nicer than than I thought,” she says thoughtfully. “I wonder if she’s trying to lure me in to get closer to my parents.”

 

“I don’t think it does any of us any good to try to figure out what Swan’s up to,” Roni says, rolling her eyes as they head back to the bar, but she turns back once, just before they turn to cross the street, anyway.

  
Swan is still walking down Main Street, far past the pawn shop or anywhere where she might have any business, her arms still stiff at her side as she fades into the distance.


	2. Chapter 2

Something changes after that day, and Jacinda is none too pleased about it. “I don't want you anywhere near Ms. Swan,” she warns Lucy one afternoon. It's much too early for the bar to have any customers, and Henry is typing at one end of the bar while Lucy peers over his shoulder. He’s working on a sequel to his first novel–  _ the serial killer is carving out hearts now _ , he tells them, after which Lucy is only allowed to sit with him when he’s writing certain scenes– and she’s reading as he types, chin on his shoulder as she puzzles out some of the phrases.

 

She pulls away from him now. “She's much nicer than she seems. Bad at people,” she says, shrugging. “She didn't kidnap me or anything, just asked me some questions at the school bus. I think she wanted to know about my book.”

 

“Lucy,” Jacinda sighs, cleaning exasperatedly. Jacinda can clean in pretty much any mood. Right now, she's organizing glasses by thickness as Roni washes them off, her face tight.

 

“She says that she’s never seen it before. But I know I found it at her shop,” Lucy says thoughtfully. “Do you think she's forgotten that she's the Dark One?”

 

Jacinda slams her hands on the bar. “Lucy,  _ enough _ !” Henry looks up at last, and Jacinda shakes her head. Roni can see the flush on her face as she says, “I’m going upstairs. Lucy, you have homework.” 

 

Lucy glares at the bar as Jacinda disappears upstairs, and Henry says mildly, “Whether or not she's some creature of unfathomable evil–” Roni’s stomach twists at that, and she has no idea why– “Ms. Swan does seem like the kind of woman you're better off staying away from, Lucy.”

 

“Well, duh,” Lucy says, rolling her eyes. “She's the Dark One. She’s the reason why you and Mama got split up in the first place, and she knows that once you’re together again, her curse is going to break.”

 

“Really,” Henry says, exchanging a look with Roni. “Why was she so interested in us, then? Considering that I don't think she's ever even noticed I exist. Not around Roni, anyway.” He tosses her a sly glance that she returns with confusion.

 

Lucy ponders that. “I don't know. The book doesn't say why. It’s your story, not hers.” She brightens. “Maybe she was afraid you’d write her away. Or take her darkness from her. I bet she'd be someone else entirely without it.” 

 

She flips through the book, pressing a finger to a page that, to be fair, features a woman who looks a whole lot like Ms. Swan. Her hair is the same white-blonde, tied back severely, and she’s raising a knife into the air like a lightning bolt. “It just says she became the Dark One to save her True Love, but power corrupted her and made her someone vile. So of course she’d want the–”

 

“Lucy,” Jacinda calls from the staircase. She sounds tired. “Homework.”

 

“Fine,” Lucy grumps, leaving her book and stomping up the stairs. Jacinda’s face appears near the middle of the stairs, an eyebrow raised, and Lucy looks down and stops stomping at once.

 

Henry watches her go with amusement. “She's really something, isn't she?”

 

“I bet you never talked to your mother like that,” Roni says, grinning to herself. Kids, all of them. 

 

“Damn right I didn't,” Henry says, brow furrowing as he tries to remember. “Actually, it's all kind of hazy in my mind.” Roni nods in agreement. Hazy memories are a pretty common symptom of this town. There's something about the day-in, day-out of Storybrooke that makes you forget everything that had come before. “I definitely remember some yelling,” he admits. “And…” He frowns. “Love. A lot of love. I can barely remember how they looked.”

 

“They?” Roni says curiously. 

 

“She,” Henry amends. “I must have meant she.”

 

“Right.” She holds up a hand. “Hey, I’m not judging. I’m more of a ladies’ woman myself.” She glances down at herself. “I thought I made that pretty obvious. Even Swan thought Jac was my girlfriend.”

 

Henry finishes his drink and she refills it by reflex. “I wondered the same when I got here, to be fair.”

 

Roni snorts. “She’s a kid,” she repeats. “And I'm not really the dating kind. You fall in love, you get attached, you get screwed over. I have one true love and it's this bar.” She thumps her hand on it. “It's a terrible love triangle between me, my bar, and the bitch who owns it.” 

 

They both laugh, easy and comfortable, and Roni glances out the window on automatic. This is around Swan’s time of the afternoon, when she lurks and comes inside to harass Roni before the nighttime crowd arrives. Swan has four or five regular times during the day. On the most eventful days, she makes an appearance for each.

 

Henry twists his neck to see what she’s watching for and then gives her a knowing look. “Did you say Swan thought Jacinda was your girlfriend? She asked you about that?”

 

Roni shrugs. “Yeah. So?”

 

Henry’s grin is impish, Lucy as a man triple her age. “So maybe you're in a few love triangles there, I’m just saying–” 

 

Roni splashes a glass of water up at him. Henry yelps. “My laptop! My livelihood!” He seizes it and holds it close, like he’s cradling a child, and levels a mock-accusing glare at her. “I’m going somewhere far away from here to get work done. Definitely...across the room at  _ least _ .” 

 

She flicks more water at him. “Serves you right. When are you going to write me into the story already? The charming, badass bartender who the sheriff goes to every night for a drink?” 

 

“The bartender’s heart is going next,” Henry threatens. But they're both grinning, and Roni can feel comforting familiarity in the exchange. Everything about Henry is comforting familiarity, and she finds herself hoping quietly that Jacinda and Henry will manage one of those grand romances she scoffs at, if it means that he might stick around for good.

 

For now, it's the promise of watching him open his laptop in the corner and the smiling wallpaper of his daughter on it. It's amazing what children can bring their parents to be, out of sheer, unconditional love.

 

She shifts, suddenly restless, and glances out the window again. Swan is late for the evening harassment.

 

* * *

 

Swan never comes that night, but she's back the next, armed with acid commentary and veiled threats. That night, she's memorized the liquor license bylaws and points out every violation, smirk firmly in place between the moments of burning hatred. 

 

There are fewer moments of burning hatred lately, and Roni can't imagine what it is that's tempered Swan.  _ Well _ . Maybe she can imagine  _ something _ . 

 

She spots them from across the street one Sunday when Lucy’s supposed to be at home, Swan’s gait awkward and stiff and Lucy with her book tucked under her arm, chattering away. They stop in front of Granny’s, and Roni can hear the conversation filtering back to her.

 

“And how do you know that I’m this...Dark One?” Swan is challenging Lucy. “Because we have the same hair? Don't you think the Dark One would be hiding a little better than that?”

 

Lucy rolls her eyes. “I'm not  _ dumb _ , Emma. And I’m not crazy, so stop acting like I am.” 

 

Roni stops dead, and it isn't at the stricken look on Swan’s face. There's something–

 

–she doesn't  _ remember _ –

 

“I don't think you're crazy,” Swan says, her voice hoarse. “I just think you're wrong about...a lot of this.” She shakes her head, visibly frustrated. “I don't know why you're  _ here _ – who you are–”

 

“I'm Lucy Tremaine,” Lucy says, frowning at her. “And my parents are going to break your curse.”

 

Swan’s back straightens, her face dark. “Good luck to them, then.” 

 

Lucy persists, as she does. “So you admit it’s your curse?” 

 

Swan shakes her head again, this time with a hollow look in her eyes. She walks on. “It’s not my curse,” she throws over her shoulder, and Lucy clenches her fists in frustration and whirls around, her eyes landing on a spot across the street where Roni is waiting. 

 

She raises a hand in greeting, eyebrow raised, and Lucy looks down. “Don’t tell Mama,” she begs when Roni crosses the street to her. “It’s just–” She shrugs her shoulders, clutching the book tighter. “She’s the only one who knows the truth. I think. I don’t even know that,” she says glumly. “And I don’t know how to break this curse. I want my parents to remember each other. I want my dad to remember me.” 

 

Her eyes fill with tears, and Roni crouches down beside her, silently sliding an arm around her waist. This is…some kind of coping mechanism, they’ve all decided. Some way to deal with her father entering her life for the first time. And as much as it upsets Jac to hear her talking like this, it seems like it’s the only way Lucy processes. “I wish I knew who you were in the Enchanted Forest,” Lucy sniffles. “I wish I knew…everything. I just want this curse to break.” 

 

“And what happens if it doesn’t?” Roni asks gently, steering her into the diner. She nods at Granny, who turns to pour some cocoa. “What do you want if the curse doesn’t break?” 

 

Granny sprinkles in some cinnamon and brings over Lucy’s cocoa. Lucy stares blankly into it. “What is there if it doesn’t?” 

 

“Your parents,” Roni points out. “Both living above my bar right now. Your father wants to get to know you. You have the run of this town– aside from the pawn shop,” Roni adds hastily. “You don’t need a magical solution to your problems. You can solve them yourself.” 

 

Lucy stares at her. “I’m  _ ten _ , Roni. I can’t solve anything. All I can do is chase Emma and try to get her to listen.” 

 

Roni sighs. “Okay, Lucy. Okay.” She glances across the street, to where she’s parked her bike. “How about I give you a ride back to school before they call your mom?” Lucy bobs her head, red-eyed and solemn. “See? There’s a solution right there.” 

 

* * *

 

Lucy thinks about it. She sits with Jacinda and Henry at breakfast the next day and she talks to them about something other than the book, the three of them huddled together over pancakes like a family that may yet get their moment, and Roni eats her own pancakes and laughs at herself for feeling oddly lonely. She isn’t supposed to have  _ family _ , people to spend her life with. She’s perfectly happy with a roommate and her daughter, and if they move on, well…it doesn’t matter. People are her business. It’s absurd for a bartender to be lonely. 

 

She watches Henry with Lucy, ignores the pang that reverberates through her, and Jacinda heads over to the bar. “You’re not serving anyone drinks at eight in the morning,” she says reprovingly. “Come have breakfast.” 

 

Roni shakes her head. “And miss watching the way you glow around him?” she teases, and Jacinda flushes. “Go,” Roni says, her voice gentle. “Enjoy them both. I’m fine right here.” 

 

She eats her own pancakes while browsing the morning paper, glancing up only periodically at the table across the room. Henry has made a smile out of his pancake and is holding it up to his mouth, and Lucy is giggling, no sign in her eyes that she’s thinking about curses or magic or her book right now.  _ Good _ . The real world might not be quite as attractive as grand adventures are for a ten-year-old, but it’s all they have.

 

She sees the figure in the window before she registers who it is, and that must be the only reason why her heart leaps in her chest when she looks up. Swan stares back at her, eyes wide for a moment at being caught, and then settles into a grimace instead. Roni quirks an eyebrow, a smirk settling onto her face, and Swan takes a step forward, toward the door. 

 

Their eyes are still locked, and Roni crooks a finger, watching with fascination as Swan takes another step. She doesn’t know exactly what it is that Swan’s planning, but she seems just as surprised as Roni is to find herself in front of the bar door. She pushes the door open, slowly, and Roni holds her breath, unsure of what’s going to happen now. 

 

Swan lets go of the door, turning on her heel and stalking away from the bar, and Roni watches her go, feeling an odd sense of disappointment.

 

She doesn’t come back for over a day, which is…a first for Swan. “I don’t understand what she’s planning,” Roni complains to Henry the next night. Jacinda is out on a call, and Lucy’s taken advantage of it to persuade her far more lenient father and roommate to let her stay up late. She’d drifted off hours ago, curled up in a comfy chair that Henry had carried downstairs for her, and Henry sits beside her, an absent finger curling her hair around it. “Swan never passes up on a chance to screw with me.” 

 

“Maybe she got spooked from yesterday morning,” Henry suggests, wiggling his eyebrows. At her sour look, he says, “What? You watch me flirt terribly, I watch you flirt terribly.” 

 

“I wasn’t  _ flirting _ ,” Roni says, outraged. 

 

Henry snorts. “You were definitely flirting. I’ve known you my whole life, I know when you’re into…” His voice trails off. “Huh,” he says, frowning.

 

_ I’ve known you my whole life _ . Roni’s as bewildered as Henry is, but there’s something that still rings true about it, about who they are to each other. “You also…” she begins delicately, unsure of how to express it. “There’s something, isn’t there?” 

 

Henry watches her with the same solemn look as Lucy does. “Yeah,” he admits. “I think there might be.”

 

“I don’t understand it,” Roni murmurs. “We aren’t– I don’t remember you. But I know you.”

 

Henry opens his mouth and then closes it, and they both jump when Roni’s phone rings. “It’s the station,” she says, sighing. “Probably Jac. I should–” She picks up the phone and freezes.

 

It isn’t Jacinda at all. It’s her deputy sheriff, and she sounds grim. “She went to check out reports of a minor disturbance and found a knife fight. I had to arrest the guy who knifed her and I couldn’t go with the ambulance, so I thought you might–” 

 

“Yeah, of course.” She hangs up the phone, staring up at Henry. “Jac is in trouble,” she says, and he springs up and grabs his coat.

 

* * *

 

They make it to the hospital in record time, Henry in the backseat so he can hold Lucy while she huddles against her seat in grim silence. “Jacinda Tremaine,” Roni says tersely. “I’m her emergency contact.” 

 

“Oh, thank god,” the nurse at the desk says, and they might be small town, but they’re not  _ that  _ small town, usually. “Sorry,” she says, only just realizing her unprofessionalism, and she waves them into the hallway so she can speak to them. “It’s just that she’s been shouting and refusing treatment. For a  _ stab wound _ . She says that Dr. Tremaine–” 

 

“Her stepmom.” Roni lets out a curse. There’s only one person in this town whom Jacinda would die rather than see. “What about Dr. Whale? Is he on duty?” 

 

“Not this late at night,” the nurse says apologetically. “He won’t come in over a patient’s preference. Do you think you can talk to her?” 

 

“She’s not going to give in,” Lucy says, her voice wavering. She’s clutching onto Henry’s arm, and her face is grim and determined. “You have to get Dr. Whale.”

 

The nurse looks sympathetic. “I’m sorry. He won’t budge.” Roni doesn’t doubt it. Whale is a dick even when it isn’t the middle of the night, and Jacinda’s plight isn’t going to make him more compassionate. But Lucy’s also right. Jac is never going to let her stepmother get anywhere near her, not ever again. She might not be Lucy’s Cinderella, but that kind of baggage is unmovable. Roni’s going to have to get in there, force Jacinda to accept treatment–

 

Lucy’s eyes narrow in sudden clarity. “Roni,” she says, and she blinks back tears, wipes them away with the back of her hand and straightens. “You have to call Emma,” she says, and they stare at her in consternation. “Emma owns this whole town, right? If anyone can get Dr. Whale, it’s her.” 

 

“Lucy–” 

 

“You have to!” She’s crying again, sniffling back more tears. “She’ll help. I know she will. She might not care about Mama, but she  _ likes  _ you.”

 

Roni stares disbelieving at her. “She hates me!” 

 

Lucy shakes her head, her eyes blazing through her tears. “She’ll help you,” she says again, and Roni’s hands tighten around her phone– every moment is another that Jacinda is lying in there, getting worse– and she hits Swan’s number and grits her teeth.

 

Swan picks up immediately. “What now, Meyers?” she asks, her voice rough with sleep. 

 

Roni swallows years of pride and says, “Lucy needs your help.” 

 

A pause, and then, “What can I do?” 

 

Dr. Whale is there ten minutes later, blinking sleep out of his eyes as Swan strides beside him. She doesn’t acknowledge them, hovers outside the ER where they’re not allowed to be, and no one dares to question her. Roni watches her in the waiting room through the windows in the double doors of the ER, and Swan– for once– doesn’t seem to notice. Her eyes are fixed on whatever she can see going on, and she pauses only to question nurses who pass by. 

 

Roni drifts off, her head dropping onto Henry’s shoulder, and she dreams of surgeons and knives, of knives, of a knife raised into the air with a name written on it. There are faces she knows in her dreams, a woman holding her in a needy embrace, and she wakes up to someone else lightly pulling on her hand. She blinks, still half asleep, and she mumbles, “Emma?” 

 

“It’s me,” Swan says, and she’s staring at Roni as though she’s seen a ghost. Roni yawns, still sleep-addled enough that she thinks she sees heartbreak on Swan’s face, and Swan blinks rapidly, sucking in a breath. “Your roommate’s out of surgery. She’s going to be okay.” 

 

Henry, roused as well when Roni had moved, exhales in a sob. “Jacinda,” he whispers, and he seizes Swan’s hand. “I don’t know what I can– what I can do to thank you–” 

 

Swan stares down at him. Roni’s pretty sure it’s the first time she’s ever thrown more than a glance his way. “Who are you?” she says abruptly, a strange realization dawning in her eyes, and she’s already shaking her head, already as though she knows something that the rest of them don’t–

 

“I’m Lucy’s dad,” Henry says, and Roni’s never noticed, but Henry looks at Swan with the same vaguely perplexed eyes as he had Roni when they’d first met. “Henry Mills.  _ Thank you _ –” 

 

Swan stumbles backward. Roni’s never seen her this off-balance before. She hits a stand full of pamphlets and they tumble down, and she barely pays them notice as she topples on her heels, nearly falling herself. “Henry,” she repeats, her eyes wide and open as they’ve never been before. Henry stares at her with the same intensity, his head shaking slowly from side to side. “You…” 

 

She’s still unsteady, and Roni finally jumps up, grabbing her arm before she can lose her balance. “Hey,” she says firmly, and she’s never taken the lead before with her highly unstable landlord. “It’s late, and you’ve been up this whole time. You need sleep.” 

 

Swan laughs wildly, attracting far too much attention in a somber emergency room. “I don’t need  _ any  _ sleep. That’s the point of it, isn’t it? That’s the point of–” She laughs again, and Roni yanks her arm, pulling her from the room into the cold, dark outdoors. 

 

“Hey,” she says again. “Breathe.” She doesn’t know how they’ve gotten here, how she’s standing outside with Emma Swan in the midst of a panic attack, but a part of her wants desperately to calm Swan down. A part of her sees Emma like his, teetering on the edge of an invisible precipice, and she moves to her by long-burrowed instinct. “Breathe. You look like you’re about to have a heart attack.” 

 

Swan laughs again, more wildly, echoing through the Storybrooke General Hospital parking lot. This time, the hysteria sounds closer to tears, and Roni clasps her hands against Swan’s cheeks and reminds her, “Breathe. In. Out. In. Out. I’ve got you. In–” 

 

Swan surges forward and her lips are on Roni’s before Roni can think about–  _ watching for eyes in a window and adrenaline when we fight and flirting? Is this _ – and then she’s kissing her back, being spun around and thrust against the hospital wall, lost in this impossible kiss. 

 

“Emma,” she gasps into Swan’s mouth, and the name feels more familiar on her tongue than it has any right to be. The name feels  _ right _ , like a piece of Swan that she’d never quite seen properly before. “Emma, I–” 

 

Emma kisses her roughly, fiercely, years of pent-up hatred transformed into something entirely different. Roni feels  _ alive _ , alive like only fighting with Emma can usually gift her, and she rocks against her, pressing forward in a futile attempt to gain the upper hand. Emma laughs into the kiss, and it’s an alien sound that Roni’s pretty sure she’d die to hear again. “Regina,” she says, breathless. “ _ Fuck _ , Regina–” 

 

The moment shatters. Roni shoves Emma back with all her might, sending her stumbling wild-eyed as what she’d said dawns on her, and the moment after a kiss has never felt so bitter. “What the  _ hell _ ?” 

 

“No,” Emma says, shaking her head frantically. “No, you don’t understand–  _ Roni _ . Roni, please–” 

 

“So, now you remember my name,” Roni growls out, viciously disappointed. She doesn’t know why, why she can hardly breathe when she thinks about what had just happened.  _ So what _ , that she’d kissed Emma– Emma who is incontrovertibly  _ Emma _ , not Swan.  _ So what _ , that she wasn’t who Emma was thinking of.  _ So what _ , that any of this seemed like it might matter for a single instant.

 

“Roni,” Emma says weakly, but she doesn’t come up with an explanation. She doesn’t even try to excuse herself, just stands in the parking lot with her hands up and her mouth moving wordlessly. 

 

She’s less intimidating now, somehow, even with her leather dresses and impossible heels and inhuman pale bun. She’s just a woman crying in a parking lot instead, and Roni is bitterly furious that Emma’s finally fallen into someone  _ human _ and already fucked up something…

 

Something she hadn’t really known she’d craved until it had become as necessary as oxygen in an instant, until it had been ripped away from her just as quickly. 

 

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispers, wrapping her arms around herself and looking very lonely and Roni swerves around and flees back into the emergency room instead.


	3. Chapter 3

_ Regina.  _ The name sticks with her, which is just another reminder that  _ Emma’s  _ sticking with her, and it’s all she can think about between tending to Jacinda once she's home and keeping Lucy as far from Emma as possible. “Was there a Regina in your book?” she finally asks, and Jacinda groans at the reminder of the book but doesn’t protest it. Whatever nonsense the book might be, it had been enough to somehow indirectly save her life.

 

Lucy shakes her head. “Not that I can remember. Why? Is that someone you know?” she says hopefully. “Do you believe me now?” 

 

“I think…she may have been someone Ms. Swan loved,” she says slowly, and the admission burns in her throat.  

 

“Her True Love,” Lucy says, eyes brightening. “You know that you can’t cast this curse without the heart of the thing you love most. I bet she used Regina’s heart.” She flips through the pages to find the picture of the Dark One with the knife.

 

“That's pretty cold,” Jacinda says, giving up on opposing Lucy’s fantasies. “So much for true love, huh?”

 

Lucy gives her a look. “Of course it's cold. She's the Dark One. She might be nice to us, but she's still gonna do what she has to for…” She waves vaguely. “Darkness.”  _ Darkness  _ to Lucy seems a mysterious term, as fantastical as magic and never encompassing anything ordinary.

 

Jacinda leans back in the bed of the pull-out couch, Lucy curled up beside her, and peers at the book. “She does look like Swan. Maybe someone in this town had a custom book written.”

 

“The  _ Author _ ,” Lucy reminds her, pointing dramatically at Henry. 

 

Henry shrugs good-naturedly. “Whatever you say, kid.” Lucy sticks out her tongue at him. He sticks out his tongue right back.

 

The intercom beeps, and Roni pushes it. “Yes?” 

 

“It's me.”  _ Emma _ . Roni peers out the window and sees her down in front of the bar door, fidgeting impatiently. 

 

Her first reaction is distrust, which is wholly unfair when Emma had saved Jacinda’s life just a week ago. She’s letting her personal frustration with the other woman dictate their interactions, and she's supposed to be better than this.  _ Cool as a cucumber.  _ What does she care if a woman she's barely interested in is hung up on some ex? 

 

“We’re upstairs,” she says curtly, and buzzes her in. 

 

The footsteps on the way up to the bar are tentative, unlike Emma’s typical stride. Jacinda looks wary, Lucy excited, and Henry sits silently and watches the open doorway with the same intensity as Roni.

 

Emma comes into view, her eyes trained just as intensely on Henry’s, and avoids Roni’s eyes altogether. “I heard you'd been discharged,” she says, jerking her head to Jacinda. Jacinda looks startled at the attention on her. “I wanted to see how you were doing.” 

 

“Much better,” Jacinda says, and she smiles at Emma with a sort of wary gratitude. “Thanks to you. I really appreciate what you...what you did for us.”

 

Emma shifts from side to side, clearly uncomfortable before she settles on an uncertain smile. “What's the point of running this town if I can't do anything with it?” she says finally. 

 

“Money?” Henry suggests, grinning, and Emma’s eyes snap back to him as though she's only been waiting for an excuse. 

 

“Power,” Lucy pipes up. “I bet you get free milkshakes at Granny’s.” She sighs wistfully.

 

Emma laughs, then looks startled that she had. “I definitely do it for the free milkshakes,” she says in a conspiratorial tone. There's something odd about Emma like this, relaxing in a way that seems almost painful to her, and she always looks as though she’s holding back a grimace. Roni keeps quiet, swallowing back her fascination and busying herself with lunch at the kitchen island. She feels eyes on her and knows whose they are.

 

“So,” Emma says abruptly, twisting to stare at Jacinda again. “What was the issue with the doctor on call?”

 

Lucy says, “She would have  _ killed  _ Mama.”

 

Jacinda laughs, a little strained. “You know, the usual. You don't cross your evil stepmother.” 

 

There's an awkward silence for a moment. When Roni peers out at the living room, she sees Emma’s fingers, digging into her sides as though she's holding back a fist. “So what does that make you?” she says lightly. “Snow White?”

 

Jacinda shrugs. “Lucy says I’m Cinderella, actually.”

 

“Of course.” Emma stares at her, brow furrowed, and she turns to Lucy. “And what does that make your dad? Some noble prince?”

 

“The Author,” Lucy corrects her, impatient. “You know all this. You're the Dark One who  _ hunted  _ them.” 

 

“Lucy,” Roni says reprovingly. Emma’s fingers are still digging into her side, white from the force of it, and her face is blank. “Ms. Swan just saved your mother’s life. Is this really the time for fairytales?” 

 

“Maybe I’d better go,” Emma says, glancing away from them all. Her gaze stutters on Henry for a moment, and he opens his mouth as though to say something. “I’m glad you're healing well,” Emma says stiffly, back to the untouchable Ms. Swan, and she hurries back down the stairs before Henry can speak. 

 

Roni sighs. “One second.” The hatred is mutual between them, and she doesn't know what part of her it is that seems to crave that laugh again. That kiss, meant as it had been for someone else. Emma’s overtures  _ matter _ , somehow, and she hates it but hurries after her instead. 

 

Emma is standing at the bar when Roni comes down, pouring herself a tumbler of whiskey and staring blankly into space. She jumps when she sees Roni, her face twisting into a grotesque mockery of her standard sneer. It doesn't  _ work  _ when her eyes are this sad. “I own this place, don't I?” she says bitterly. 

 

“These are the perks,” Roni says wryly, taking the bottle from her. “Milkshakes at Granny's and whiskey at Roni’s.” Their fingers brush and it lights something up within Roni like the summer sky. “That's my name,” she adds, a little snide. “In case you'd forgotten again.”

 

Emma tips her glass into her mouth, swirling the liquid around in it before she swallows. Her eyes are heartbreakingly earnest when she turns back to face Roni, and Roni can sense an apology building up that she doesn't want to deal with. Apologies mean this  _ means _ something, and she isn't idiot enough to believe that. “I wanted to say I’m–”

 

“Don't talk to me,” Roni says sharply and kisses her, twisting Emma back against the bar and keeping a tight hand in her hair. Emma exhales, sliding a finger into Roni’s waistband to pull her closer.

 

They've kissed twice, and Emma already knows the roadmap of her body, lips and teeth and all the spots that make Roni groan. They fit together in ways that are ridiculous and still feel right, feel familiar like coming home. Roni digs a hand into Emma’s hair, yanks it out of the bun with determination until the tie falls to the floor and Emma is standing in front of her, eyes wide and hungry as she pants, hair tangled and messy as it falls past her shoulders. 

 

“Come here,” she says, pulling Roni back to her. 

 

“I told you not to talk,” Roni hisses, biting her ear warningly. Emma chokes, mouth closing around Roni’s lower lip, a hand creeping up her front. 

 

There’s a thumping on the steps, and then Henry’s voice. “Roni? You okay down there?” and Roni’s shoving Emma behind the bar, Emma sliding to the floor as Roni slides one glass out of sight. 

 

Henry emerges from the staircase, his brow quirked. “Day drinking?”

 

“Ms. Swan drives me to it,” Roni says serenely, ignoring the gasp of outrage from behind the bar. “I’ll be up in a few.”

 

* * *

 

Emma doesn’t call for some possibly-dead lover again, though she doesn’t call for Roni, either. Still, Roni finds every excuse to see her again, and every interaction seems to end in one place. She’s sitting at Granny’s with Henry when Emma arrives, making a wry comment about the double order of fries she’s eating– and  _ okay _ , maybe she doesn’t have a six-pack like Emma’s (she runs her fingers over it too often, licks salty skin and listens to Emma moan at her touch), but a little bit of grease isn’t the reason why.

 

“I’m not criticizing your body,” Emma says, hands up. “I have  _ zero  _ criticism of your body–” Henry coughs loudly and Roni definitely sees a hint of pink on Emma’s cheeks at that. “I just think it’s…endearing.”

 

_ Endearing _ means Roni scoffs and then, after Emma steals her fries and makes surprisingly easy conversation with Henry and Henry wanders to the front to chat with Archie Hopper,  _ endearing  _ means making out in the back hallway of Granny’s like a couple of teenagers. 

 

Emma makes her daily rounds to the bar again, but the sneer is a little more like a leer and Roni shoots back responses without the venom of the past. Jacinda thinks that Emma’s softening on them. Roni’s privately concerned that she’s the one who’s softening.

 

They’re in the pawn shop one night when Henry’s tending the bar, Emma’s shirt up and Roni’s mouth buried deep in her cleavage, when Emma says abruptly, “Come home with me.” 

 

Roni shrugs, because why not? Emma’s place probably doesn’t have a big window in the front where they have to avoid prying eyes. 

 

Or, well, Emma’s place has big  _ everything _ . It’s the house that was once the mayoral mansion, back when Storybrooke had had a mayor instead of an incompetent board that might as well install a revolving door for the number of board members who are constantly replaced. It’s huge and imposing and suits Emma but not Roni at all.

 

She’s never been inside. There’s something about that big house that makes Roni shiver, and she’s always been vaguely unnerved while walking down Mifflin Street. She’d always assumed it had been her proximity to Emma that had felt so unnerving, but she seems to be doing just fine with that now, and the house remains…unsettling.

 

Emma doesn’t seem surprised at the tension that suffuses her when she walks inside. There’s a strange deja vu to it, to the point that Roni says uncertainly, “I haven’t been here before, have I?” She knows, somehow, that if she turns to the right, there will be a study. Up ahead is a dining room, to the diagonal right is the kitchen, and she shivers again. 

 

“Upstairs,” Emma murmurs, and Roni leads the way to Emma’s bedroom without a second thought. The bed feels like home, and Roni lets out a dry sob that she can’t contain, her hands falling from Emma’s hips as she lies limp on a mattress that feels as though it’s drowning in sadness. Emma slides in beside her, rests a protective arm over her and kisses her hair, and Roni stares at the ceiling as ridiculous, unreasonable tears slide down her cheeks.

 

“I’m sorry,” she manages after a long time.

 

Emma kisses her cheek. “No,” she says firmly, and Roni falls silent again.

 

She falls asleep in Emma’s bed, and when she wakes up, she can’t remember her name for a moment. She yawns, stumbling to the next bedroom to wake up her son for school, and then she finally remembers who she is and stops, standing limply in the hall.

 

Emma’s arms slide around hers from behind. “What’s wrong?” 

 

“I thought…I dreamed I had a son,” Roni says, still dazed. She can’t remember his face, can’t remember anything but ephemeral love and safety and family.

 

Emma’s arms tighten around her. “Come back to bed,” she whispers, and she sounds bereft. Roni climbs back into bed, and this time, she hooks Emma’s legs over her shoulders and makes her scream. 

 

The house still feels familiar the next time she goes there; but now it must be only because of the morning she’d spent there before. She goes out more nights now, after she closes bar and sometimes before. Henry and Jacinda must know what she’s up to, because they never ask a single question and watch her with sly grins and knowing looks, and she flushes and keeps her head high and continues the verbal sparring with Emma regardless.

 

Only Lucy remains oblivious, which is probably for the best as the memories of Jacinda’s rescue begin to fade and Lucy focuses back on the Dark One part of Emma. “She seems happier lately,” she says, frowning at her book. “Does that mean she’s plotting something else? Do you think it’s because my parents are together again?” 

 

“Together again?” Roni repeats, and Jacinda avoids her eyes while Henry beams, winking at Roni while Lucy looks on with approval. Lucy slides into place next to Henry, snuggling into his side, and then she says, her voice far more perturbed, “I thought that the curse would break if they kissed. Have you kissed yet?” 

 

Henry coughs. Jacinda says, “ _ Lucy _ .” 

 

Roni says, eyes sparkling with amusement, “Well, have you?” 

 

Jacinda suddenly seems very interested in her breakfast. Lucy grins at Roni, though there’s still that disappointment in her eyes. She isn’t going to let up on her curse anytime soon, no matter how impossible it is to prove it exists.

 

* * *

 

It’s an unusual Sunday morning when Jac and Lucy are out on their own, having some sorely needed mother-daughter bonding time away from the bar. On days like this in the past, Roni had entertained herself by heading to the gym or swimming in the community pool, losing herself in sweat-soaked skin and adrenaline thumping through her ears.

 

Today, Henry’s laptop battery has lost its charge unexpectedly, and they’re at an electronics store instead. “I don’t think I’ve ever been here,” Roni muses.

 

Henry frowns. “Never? What about the big screen for the bar? Or your phone?” Roni shrugs. She must have gone somewhere to get them, but if she thinks too much about it, her head goes fuzzy and she forgets what she’d been thinking in the first place. 

 

A moment later, Henry’s eyes go vague and unfocused, and he changed the subject. “I’m almost finished with the first draft of the novel,” he says as they browse. “I haven’t gotten nearly as much writing done since I got here.” 

 

“You mean having a child isn’t conducive to long hours spent writing?” Roni says, laughing. “Who would have suspected  _ that _ .” He rolls his eyes at her, and she squeezes his hand. “I’m glad you’re here, even if it has slowed you down.” 

 

“So am I.” He looks at her for a moment, his eyes solemn. “I must have…I mean, I  _ know  _ I had a family, a long time ago. A family that mattered. But it’s been so long, and I guess I’ve gotten used to being alone. My only family was my books. And now– having Jac and Lucy and– and you, and this town, and even Lucy’s favorite Dark One–” He exhales. “It feels like home. Like I’ve been looking for you all for a long time.”

 

“Henry,” Roni breathes, and she wraps an arm around him and squeezes in a half-embrace. Maybe it’s because he’s the one who writes, who weaves words into narratives so well– maybe that’s why he can put it into words in ways that she never could. 

 

He shrugs, looking embarrassed. “I’m just going to…pick up that battery and get back to work. Turner isn’t going to escape the serial killer by herself.” 

 

“I don’t know,” Emma says, rounding the aisle and leaning against the display opposite them. How long had she been there? Sort-of relationship or not, Roni can’t match her adeptness at lurking. “Turner seems pretty badass. The way she took on the bad guy last book? She’s got this.” 

 

Henry looks at her in astonishment. “You read my book?” Roni had, of course, leafed through it despite a vague discomfort. She hadn’t thought of herself as squeamish before now, but maybe Henry’s just that good. 

 

Emma shrugs. “I was curious. Stayed up with it all night last week. You’re going to be the next great American author, aren’t you?” She smiles at him. It’s strange, how often Emma’s smiles are layers on layers, and the root layer always seems to be a deep, drowning pit of desolation. The affection still shines through: shines when she’s breathless on top of Roni, eyes bright; shines when she’s talking with Lucy and Jacinda about anything but Lucy’s curse; shines now, as proud as Roni is of Henry’s talent. 

 

Henry basks under it. “That’s the plan,” he says, winking at them both. “Everyone likes a good story about carving out hearts, right?” 

 

“It’s my favorite topic,” Roni says, straight-faced. Emma watches her, a curious expression on her face.

 

“I can’t say it’s mine,” Emma murmurs. “But you make it worth reading.” She reaches out to lay a hand on Henry’s shoulder, squeezing it lightly.

 

Henry laughs. “You’re both too good for my ego.” When he beams at them, he looks as young as Lucy, full of youthful exuberance and delight. “Maybe I will write in a bartender. And a pawn shop owner. Who have a secret, torrid–” 

 

“ _ No _ ,” Roni says darkly. Emma’s smile doesn’t meet her eyes. “We’re  _ not _ .” 

 

Henry holds up a hand. “Of course not,” he says, stepping back. “But if you  _ were _ , you know, be careful. I hear that Emma’s the actual embodiment of darkness or something.” He laughs. Emma’s smile has vanished altogether, and Roni can feel her sadness like her own heart is raw and damaged. “I gotta go. I have a sheriff to save.” He puts a hand on each of their backs, leaning forward between them for a moment. “Go have lunch or something like the mortal enemies you are.” 

 

And so they do.


	4. Chapter 4

“So this is Lucy’s book,” Emma says, flipping through it days later. She’s only half dressed, curled on the living room couch with Roni’s arms around her and chin on her shoulder. “Who are you supposed to be in it?”

 

“I’m not in it.” Roni says, amused. “It’s the story of her parents falling in love and having her before they’re cruelly separated by some grand curse of the Dark One’s. That’s you,” she says, poking Emma’s side. “There are pictures and everything.”

 

“Hm.” Emma sounds more muted now. They’re alone in the bar today. Jacinda’s finally returned to work and Henry’s out in the woods somewhere, hunting for inspiration for his sheriff’s flight. They still have a few hours until Lucy gets back from school, and Roni intends to maximize this time. “That doesn’t look anything like me.”

 

“You have to admit, the black clothes and the hair–”

 

“Nope. Nothing.” Emma twists around, and Roni sees that she has a point. She’s wearing one of Roni’s oversized flannels and panties and nothing else, and Roni’s run through her hair enough that it falls in waves past her shoulders and neck. She doesn’t look anything like the severe villain in Lucy’s book.

 

“Maybe not,” Roni agrees easily, and she bats the book away. “Come here,” she says, nuzzling Emma’s neck. “You can read some fairytales later.”

 

Emma laughs, catching her lips with her own and kissing her, the two of them swaying together as Emma backs Roni against the arm of the couch. Roni pulls her down, arms wrapping around Emma’s neck happily, and she has no idea how they’ve reached the point where Emma makes Roni _happy_ , where Roni’s broken every rule she has for moments like this.

 

It’s so incredibly _stupid_ , and she can’t even count the reasons why. Emma is her landlord. Emma has a venomous streak. Emma still cries out in the night for someone named Regina, even if she never says her name while she’s awake. There’s nothing about this pseudo-relationship that isn’t doomed to failure, and she should know better than this.

 

And yet, she finds that she isn’t ready to give it up, either. They’re going to break each other’s hearts someday, but until then, Roni can’t imagine that she’s going to put a stop to this. There’s something about Emma that draws her in, that makes their moments together as addictive and exhilarating as their fights had been, and Roni can’t muster up even a single bit of herself that wants anything but this.  

 

Emma’s kissing her neck now, and Roni leans back, her eyes drifting shut. “ _Fuck_ , that’s good,” she says, and the door to the apartment opens.

 

It had been locked. They’d definitely locked it. And there’s Lucy in the doorway, her key in her hand and her eyes wide, and Roni freezes.

 

“What…” Lucy takes a step back. “What are you doing with Emma–” She shakes her head, her eyes only wider. “With the Dark One?” she corrects, her voice wavering.

 

Emma rolls off of Roni, reaching out a hand to Lucy. “Lucy–” she says, her eyes pleading, and Lucy darts into the apartment, grabbing her book from the coffee table where they’d left it, and runs before Roni can say a word. The bar door slams closed downstairs, and Roni climbs to her feet, yanking on her shoes at the door.

 

Emma swears. “I didn’t– why is she _so_ hung up on–?” She squeezes her hands in frustration.

 

Roni finally finds her voice. “Stay here. I’ll go after her.”

 

“No. I’ll find her,” Emma says insistently. “I _find_ people, it’s what I do–”

 

“As far as Lucy’s concerned, what you do is cast curses!” Roni snaps, and Emma rears back. Roni shakes her head, out of words to make this okay, and she’s running out of time, she doesn’t have _time_ – “Call Jac and Henry. Let them know what’s going on. I’m out.”

 

It’s cruel, maybe, to push Emma away on a child’s fantasy. But what choice does she have? For all their newfound cordiality, Lucy’s always been firm on Emma being the Dark One, and the one they’re going to have to stop in the end. Lucy’s fantasies hadn’t been that far off, not when it had come to her parents, and Roni doesn’t have time to calm her lover when a little girl is in danger because Roni couldn’t _control_ herself.

 

She’s aware she’s being irrational, but all she can think of is– “Lucy!” she calls, running down the block. “Lucy!”

 

No Lucy. The other shopkeepers haven’t seen her, either, which means she’s gone only one way– into the woods. “Lucy?” she shouts, climbing through the underbrush and pushing low branches out of the way. “Lucy, please!”

 

Jacinda and Henry are behind her soon enough, Jac’s voice high with fear and Henry squeezing his fingers into his sides like Emma does when she’s tense. “Lucy!” Jacinda calls, Henry’s voice combining with hers. “Lucy!”

 

An hour into the search, Jacinda calls her deputy to comb through the rest of the town, just in case. “She’s in here,” Jacinda says, staring around in the slowly darkening woods. “I know it.” Neither she nor Henry has asked about why Lucy had run. They must have figured it out, certainly after Emma had called them. Roni bites back bitter guilt as they search.

 

“Hey,” Henry murmurs, catching her expression. “It isn’t your fault. Lucy’s a runner.” He squeezes her hand. “I used to be a runner, too. It would have happened whether or not she’d seen…whatever she saw,” he finishes delicately.

 

Jacinda says, her tone brisk, “I’m Lucy, I want to…run. Regardless of where it takes me.” She scans the forest. “I go through the easiest parts to get through only if they’re right in front of me.” She leads them forward, brow furrowed, and a few little pocket mice scatter in front of them. Jacinda follows them almost automatically, her eyes glazed over, and the mice turn to the right sharply and scurry forward, leading them through the woods.

 

“Are we following the mice?” Henry asks under his breath.

 

“So it seems.” Roni shrugs and follows Jacinda. There are worse leads right now, and the mice _are_ acting oddly, doubling around to lead them back where they’d come from, albeit a little deeper into the woods.

 

And there, crouched on a log, is Lucy, trembling in the cold. “Lucy!” Jacinda cries out, and Henry is with her, the three of them locked in a family hug that makes Roni long for… _something_ , again. She doesn’t bother trying to understand what anymore. “Lucy, what were you _doing_?”

 

“Look, Mama,” Lucy says breathlessly, and she points to something in front of them that they hadn’t noticed before. “Look what I found.” A massive mansion towers over them, and Roni swallows.

 

Again, the strange sensation of familiarity. Henry is already walking toward it, his expression as lost as hers, and Lucy says, “Wait! Wait for me!” and bounds behind him. Roni steps after them, Jacinda bringing up the rear, and she doesn’t know what it is that they’re looking for but she knows that it’s in that house.

 

Henry is still walking, silent and with a jagged gait like a sleepwalker, and Lucy is beginning to look anxious as she stares up at him. “Daddy?” she says tentatively. “Daddy, is everything okay?”

 

They round a hallway that leads to a number of rooms, but Henry ignores them all, stopping only at the end of the hallway. He reaches for a light fixture in front of him and _pulls_ , and the wall opens in front of them.

 

Beyond the hallway is a room, chairs and a desk with a pen and a book lying atop it. There are bookshelves everywhere, and every single book on the shelves looks like Lucy’s book. Jacinda opens one. “They’re all blank,” she says in wonder. “Lucy…who wrote your book?”  

 

“Daddy did,” Lucy says, not for the first time, and this time, they turn and see Henry at the desk. His eyes are milky white, like a film is covering them, and he’s writing frantically with the pen on the desk.

 

Roni says, “Henry. _Henry_ ,” her voice rising in urgency, but Henry doesn’t respond, not even when she shakes his shoulder and tries to pull him from the book. He pulls away from her, more writing exploding onto the page, and Roni peers over his shoulder at it.

 

“ _Once upon a time, there was a savior who fell in love_ ,” she reads, and Lucy hurries over to her, the three of them gathered behind Henry as he writes a story of a girl who’s never given a name, a child found on the side of a road and passed from guardian to uncaring guardian who still grows up good. _When she’s seventeen, she meets a man who promises her everything and then casts her aside. He does give her everything, growing within her as she languishes in jail_.

 

She gives the boy away, and he returns ten years later to bring her to his town to break a curse. She loves the boy, fights his mother, and breaks the curse when that fight grows into something dangerous for him. And then the story shifts to the two mothers, to resentment and wariness that grows into friendship grows into love, up until the moment that the savior sees her True Love being consumed by a darkness that threatens to take everything from her.

 

The savior raises a dagger into the air, pulling the darkness from her True Love, and Roni is weeping as she reads and she doesn’t know why. She stumbles backward, oblivious to Lucy and Jacinda’s worried glances, and it _hurts_ , hurts like something is building up inside of her and threatening to break free, something tearing her open from the inside out and laying waste to her soul.

 

Henry’s eyes clear from milky white to brown, and he sets the pen down, gaping up at them. “What the hell was that?” he says, and no one can give him an answer.

 

* * *

 

Roni flees, leaving the three of them behind in the mansion– Lucy and Jacinda and a boy she’s known since before she’d met him. She can feel the story creeping through her, finding truth in places that have been vacant since before she can remember. Nothing that has happened tonight is possible, least of all Henry writing stories he doesn’t know. Nothing that has happened can be _real_ , yet somehow–

 

She walks quickly, hurrying through the streets in clothes that don’t fit right anymore, her mind working furiously and not at all. Her phone rings and she ignores it, once then twice, and the text that appears on the screen– _Henry’s writing the Evil Queen’s story, you’d better get back here_ – is only enough to have her moving faster, frantically, the stories seeping in through her pores.

 

She stops outside the pawn shop, where the lights are dim and there’s a sign on the door informing the street that it’s closed. She pushes the door open anyway, and Emma looks up, startled, and rushes to her. “Deputy Hua said you found Lucy. What’s wrong–”

 

Roni kisses her, holds her tight in the dark pawn shop, and Emma quiets. “Tell me,” Roni says, her voice raspy. “Tell me the truth about who I am.”

 

Emma’s face is lined with fear. “Roni–”

 

“Is my name–” Roni swallows, kissing her again, pressing her lips to Emma’s in a vain attempt to hide from what’s quickly beginning to seem like the truth. “Am I Regina?” she whispers, and Emma cries, wracking, heaving sobs with her body pressed to Roni’s.

 

“Yes,” she chokes out, and she tucks back Roni’s hair, presses a kiss to the skin she’d revealed with unspeakable tenderness. “Yes, you are.”

 

“Oh,” Roni says, dazed. She hadn’t expected an answer so quickly, so easily. She’d thought Emma might toss her out of the pawn shop just for the question. “What happened?”

 

Emma flicks off the light. In pitch blackness, she whispers the truth, and Roni is drowning in her words. “Lucy got some of it right,” she whispers, her breath choppy as though she’s running a marathon. “I became the Dark One when I saved you, and it was…liberating. Terrifying. God, so lonely.” She rests her head against Roni’s shoulder, and Roni slides her arms around Emma’s waist, swaying in place with her. To someone looking in, they would appear to be slow-dancing. “I was…it was so overwhelming, living with all that malice. I just wanted to _hurt_ , and I wanted to hurt the people I loved most of all.”

 

“So you cast a curse,” Roni guesses, and Emma shakes her head.

 

“So you sent our son away,” she breathes, and Roni trembles with _our son_. “It was the only way to keep him safe from me, you said. You gave him a magic bean and he had his pen and he– he was gone.” The grief suffuses all her words, and Roni can feel it clenching at her own heart, tearing it to pieces even without memory. “I was so angry,” Emma sighs out.

 

“So you cast a curse.” They’re still entwined, and if there’s a hidden anger deep in Roni’s memories, she can’t find it anymore.

 

Emma doesn’t answer. “We fought for so long, Regina,” she says, her hand running through Roni’s hair. Roni’s eyes are adjusting to the dark, but all she can see is Emma’s eyes, glowing with unshed tears. “We caused so much destruction. And in the end, the town was destroyed and Henry was still gone and we were so in love still that we might have died rather than to kill each other, and–”

 

“Henry,” Roni echoes, because of course it’s him. Of course Henry is their son, and all three of them had been unable to forget that even past a– “So you cast a curse,” she says, for the third time, and Emma shakes her head.

 

“No, Regina,” she whispers, and she’s crying again, the tears slipping down to Roni’s neck. “You did.”

 

Roni steps back, her heart stuttering in her chest. “I– I didn’t–”

 

“We didn’t have a choice. It was the only way to save…everyone,” Emma says, gesturing out the pawn shop window. “And it was the only way we could bring Henry back, if we played it right. I spent so long trying to get him back, realm jumping and begging him to believe that I could– that I could control it, that we could be a family again– and then one day I lost him entirely.”

 

Roni finds her voice. It’s hoarse, wet with tears she hasn’t cried yet. “Lucy said– to cast the curse, you needed– the heart of the thing you loved most.”

 

Emma bobs her head, and now she has the same look on her face that she would used to have when she’d look in the window of the bar. Roni had thought back then that she’d looked lost. Tonight, she amends it to _haunted_. “Henry was in another realm, and so– it was possible to cast the curse with the person you loved most in this realm.” Roni reaches forward unconsciously, her hand pressing to Emma’s chest.

 

“I was the Dark One,” Emma whispers. “I was immortal, and that kept me alive for long enough for you to finish casting the curse. And this was– this was my mess in the first place. I had to…”

 

“You gave up your heart,” Roni finishes shakily, and Emma doesn’t look like a woman without a heart, without a vital piece of herself. “What– what does that mean? What happens if the curse breaks? Who do you become?”

 

“ _What_ ,” Emma corrects her, eyes hollow. “ _What_ do I become.”

 

“ _No_ ,” Roni says fiercely, determined at once. _No_ , and she surges forward and kisses Emma, loves her desperately as she’d been afraid to for so long, and it’s– it’s perfect for a moment, more perfect than it’s ever been before, until the peace bubbling through her bubbles and bubbles and overflows in a mass of color, arcing out from around them in what Regina’s seen far too many times not to know it as a true love’s kiss.

 

And Emma goes limp in her arms, the humanity in her eyes fading away.

 

* * *

 

“ _No_ ,” Regina says again, and the memories wash over her and she shrugs them away, too focused on the body in her arms. “No, I won’t let you have her. Not again.” She doesn’t know where the dagger is– she doesn’t _care_ , not right now. Not when it can’t be Emma’s salvation.

 

They’d known this was a risk from the start, had known that Emma’s life would last only as long as the curse would, and Regina had refused to do it at first. But Emma had been adamant, and so many had been hurt– more than either of them could heal even after they’d reconciled. The world had been laid to waste, and the curse had been their only chance.

 

She hadn’t wanted this curse to break, not ever. “No, no, no,” she chants, and she kisses Emma again, reaches into her chest to pull out her own heart. If Snow and David could do it– could beat fate and get their happily ever after– why can’t she split her own heart? Why can’t she–

 

She tries twisting it in half and doubles over, falls crumpled to the floor and blacks out for a moment. There’s no one left in this town who could split it for her, and it’s so impossibly cruel– that she can save others, but never herself–

 

“Emma,” she chants, curling up beside Emma’s prone figure. “Emma, we found him. You have to wake up. You have to be _you_ when you…”

 

Magic is back. Regina can feel it in her veins, in her thrumming heart. Magic is back, and when Emma awakens, she’ll be the Dark One again, and this time, without her heart. She remembers now, remembers gathering items for a curse that had had them both grim and afraid. _And what about the heart_ , Regina had asked, and Emma hadn’t answered. Emma, who had only just remembered herself, who had only just found the power to fight the darkness and seen the destruction she’d wrought as though for the first time.

 

They’d had only minutes between the moment she’d crouched over the well, shoulders hunched and body and heart numb as she’d crushed Emma’s heart into glittering diamonds, and the moment the curse had taken effect. Emma had been unconscious on the ground, and the magic had begun to billow from the well, ready to take them. Regina had thought back to her first curse, to the second she’d cast with Snow, and she’d remembered then, past the grief and emptiness, Rumple’s warning. _Now there's a hole in your heart._

 

He’d told her then that she’d come to him to fill it, and she had, and Henry had. There’s never been a curse that didn’t write solace into its programming, that hadn’t provided her with a solution even past the misery–

 

–and suddenly, she knows this one. She hits the button, her fingers shaking, and Jacinda picks up.

 

 _No. Not Jacinda_. “You,” she says, and she doesn’t sound very pleased to hear from her onetime roommate. “You’re some kind of…Evil Queen?”

 

“I need Henry,” Regina says urgently. “It’s the only way to save us all. I need Henry to drive over here and…” She outlines her plan as quickly as she can, standing so she can circle Emma’s prone figure.

 

Soon, a heartless Dark One will awaken.

 

Jacinda’s voice is cool. “You took us out of our home and into this…world,” she says. “This isn’t my realm. These aren’t my people.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Regina murmurs. This isn’t the _time_ for apologies, but this one, she knows. “We were looking for a boy. We had no idea that he’d grown up so quickly.”

 

Jacinda is silent, then she says, “Lucy can snap him out of it.”

 

Regina can hear her nearby, _“Daddy!_ ” and what sounds like Lucy slapping Henry’s cheeks.

 

“She used to do that all the time when she was little,” Jacinda says. “He’d get distracted by his books, and she’d just…slap him back into consciousness. She’s the only one who’s ever managed it,” she says ruefully, and she sounds for a moment like the Jacinda who’s been Regina’s friend– or at least Roni’s. “I can’t imagine how i could have raised her without him.”

 

“ _Daddy!_ ” Lucy says again, and there’s a loud thump from the other end.

 

Henry’s voice sounds, low and amused, and Regina aches for her son with desperation that Roni had never felt. “Hi, pumpkin.” A pause. “Is it just me, or are our memories– _Moms_ ,” he croaks out.

 

“Moms,” Jacinda echoes, realization dawning in her voice, and she passes the phone to Henry in silence.

 

* * *

 

Regina paces while she waits for Henry, careful to watch the figure still slumped on the floor. Henry. Her daughter-in-law. Her granddaughter. “We’re _grandmothers,_ Emma,” she whispers to someone who can’t respond.

 

Her shoes feel odd as she moves– her jeans feel odd, everything alien when it had been exactly her style before now. She catches a flash of herself in a pawn shop mirror, touching her hair with chagrin.

 

“I liked the hair,” rumbles a voice from the ground. “Very _sexy bartender_. And that pair of jeans you used to wear that make your ass look especially grab-able.” Emma rises from the ground, her eyes dark and unfriendly, and she takes a step forward. “I think we have some unfinished business, don’t we?”

 

Regina draws her magic, tossing a glance out the window. “Emma, don’t do this. You know you’re better than this.”

 

“And you’re better than stealing _fifteen years_ of our son’s life, aren’t you?” Emma sneers. “You sent him away, and look what we lost. Look what you did to us. And you call _me_ heartless.”

 

It hits where Emma had aimed it, stinging Regina with too much honesty. “I did what I had to do,” Regina says evenly. “You would have hurt him far worse.”

 

Emma glides forward, her steps long and threatening, but she only puts a hand to Regina’s cheek, running her knuckles against Regina’s skin with unnatural tenderness. “I gave up my soul for you,” she purrs. “And you repaid me by taking away everything I loved.”

 

Regina meets her eyes, refuses to look away, and Emma’s eyes are unmoved. “And then you took my heart,” Emma breathes. “And now I’m nothing but a broken husk. Do you still want me? Do you still love me?”

 

“I’ll always love you,” Regina says through gritted teeth. In any universe, under any name. They’re inevitable, and the only question is when, not if.

 

That answer only seems to infuriate Emma, and hot magic sparks from her hand and flashes into Regina’s skin. Regina steps back deftly with nothing more than a hissed curse, and Emma says, “ _Why_ . Why do you bother when there’s no way _out_. You can’t split your own heart, and I’m sure as hell not going to split yours–”

 

“There’s a way, love,” Regina says, and it only seems to infuriate Emma further. “There’s always a way.” Emma hurls a fireball at her, glowing white like a supernova, and Regina deflects it before it can reach her. “Don’t do this. You want your heart back, too.”

 

“I want you _dead_ ,” Emma hisses, hurling more magic at her. Regina deflects it, sends it hurtling it back, and Emma dodges easily and waves her hand, firing another blast Regina’s way.

 

Regina takes a step forward. Emma matches her steps, eyes glued to her. “I love you, Emma. And I can give you back your heart. I wrote it into the curse.”

 

“You did not,” Emma sneers. “There’s nothing in this sorry little existence that could ever–”

 

Regina sidesteps, catches a blast of lightning energy and holds it in her hand. It pulses like an electrical storm, lighting up the dim room with flashes that only just reveal eyes and skin and hands outstretched at each other. “The Author wrote a book,” Regina says, her eyes flickering only for an instant to the window. “You read the first. Did you read his manuscript for the second?”

 

“Mayor and sheriff. Yeah. Serial killer out to get everyone’s heart.” Emma’s lips twist cruelly. “Sounds like you.”

 

Regina ignores that. “And he tries to take the sheriff’s, but fails. Henry already wrote your heart back.”

 

Emma snorts. “Wishful thinking. I don’t have my heart.”

 

“Not yet,” Regina says grimly.

 

Emma’s eyes glint with malice. “You really think–” She interrupts herself, magic coursing toward Regina, and Regina doesn’t expect it. It slams into her and she cries out, and Emma takes a step forward, raising her hands to attack again–

 

The door to the pawn shop is opened. A shot is fired, and Emma is taken by surprise, the bullet tearing into her side and knocking her down. Jacinda keeps the gun trained on her from the doorway, face hard, and Regina says, “ _Now!_ ”

 

Henry throws open his laptop, and a surge of white light bursts from it.

 

* * *

 

 

(There’s a moment of silence–

 

Henry shaking as he holds the laptop open, Emma on her knees with her eyes wide and startled, Regina sliding to the ground in exhausted relief. Jacinda holds her gun with her hands trembling, and Lucy watches from behind them, her book clutched against her.

 

Then Emma is lifted into the air and she lets out an anguished scream, and the silence is shattered with her agony. Henry is breathing hard, watching her with protracted horror, and Emma screams again, dropping back to the ground. Regina crawls to her, holds her in her arms through an anguished howl of pain. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, darling,” Regina murmurs, pressing a hand to Emma’s cheek. “I can make it stop hurting soon.” 

 

“I’d rather die,” Emma grits out, still angry and haloed in darkness, and then she screams, her body lighting up with a surge of bright light. Her whole torso lifts off the floor and then slams down, again and again, and she screams, screams and screams with a hand clutching her chest. “Please,” she chokes out. “Please, please make it  _ stop _ –” 

 

“It’s done,” Henry says, his laptop crashing to the ground, and Emma goes limp, her chest still rising and falling desperately. Regina crouches over her, kissing her forehead, and a tiny bit of the whiteness of her hair fades. Henry joins her, his hand slipping into hers, and he kisses Emma’s cheek, once and twice and thrice until they’re taking turns, kissing the darkness from Emma while she lies flat on the floor, her eyes blank and unseeing.

 

And when it finally bursts from within her, a dark cloud of magic chased away into the sky, it races upward and upward until it bursts into flames, showering them all with a spray of fireworks.)

 

* * *

 

“What’ll we do with the bar?” Henry wants to know. It’s been three days, and Storybrooke is beginning to settle back to normal. They’ve always been good at bouncing back, and having the mayor back in control is a perk that everyone’s thankful for.

 

Being in the bar now feels like a distant dream, like something she’d thought had sounded grand when she’d been a child hoping only to escape Cora’s grasp and meet everyone in the kingdom around her. She would have loved it as a child. Now, she finds solace in leading instead. “Jac and Emma are both working in the station now. You can still live upstairs, but unless you want to–”

 

“I kind of do,” Henry says thoughtfully. “Writing stories is useless if you can’t find anyone who’ll talk to you. If you don’t mind, I can take over Roni’s.”

 

“This sounds suspiciously like a frat boy fantasy,” Regina says, quirking her eyebrows.

 

Henry laughs. “Lucky for you, I never made it to college.” At Regina’s glare, he says dutifully, “But I will _of course_ be attending classes at a local school when I’m not tending bar or writing.” He leans into her side. “I missed you.”

 

“We spent so many years trying to figure out how to get back to you,” Jacinda agrees from behind them. She’s dressed in her sheriff’s uniform, Emma beside her with a badge loose on her belt. Lucy is between them, smiling up at Emma as she walks. “Henry was desperate to know that you were both all right. I thought it was a pipe dream.”

 

So had they, in a sense, and it’s something else entirely to crouch down and have a little girl run into her arms, spinning her around into Emma’s arms and pulling out a cookie from her secret jar behind the bar to offer to Lucy. “Grandma!” Lucy says in delight, then squeals as Emma lifts her and spins her again.

 

“They’re going to spoil her,” Henry says in a stage whisper. “They’re going to load her up with sugar and get her all riled up, and then they’re going to hand her back to us like _that_ at bedtime.”

 

“You never complained when I did that to Regina with you,” Emma says, folding her arms and smirking.

 

Regina’s mouth opens triumphantly. “So you admit it!” She stabs an accusing finger at Emma.

 

“Shh,” Emma says, grinning. “New common enemy now, remember? We get to gang up on Henry now–” Jacinda folds her arms and arches her eyebrow. “–But we _won’t_ , of _course_ ,” Emma hurries to amend.

 

“Wouldn't dream of it, Jac,” Regina agrees, doing her best to seem innocent. She's never been very good at that.

 

Lucy says loyally, “I’ve been waiting for grandmas all my life. I should get at least _some_ spoiling.”

 

Jacinda shakes her head, amused. “Lucy, bedtime. Say goodnight to your grandmas.” They each get a hug and a kiss, and Regina watches her fondly as she disappears upstairs with her mother.

 

Henry says, “I usually read Lucy a story at bedtime,” but he reaches for both of them, enfolding his mothers in a hug. “Love you, Moms,” he murmurs.

 

“We love you, too,” Regina says, and she manages a kiss to his cheek before he pulls away, heading back upstairs to his wife and daughter. _Wife and daughter_. It’s been three days with her memories, and she still can’t quite wrap her mind around it.

 

Emma slides an arm around her arm, her head leaning against Regina’s shoulder. “It’s pretty wild, isn’t it?”

 

“Very much so,” Regina agrees fervently, twisting to face her. “How’s your heart?”

 

Emma winds her fingers through Regina’s, bringing them up over her chest. “Feel it,” she says.

 

“Feels strong,” Regina murmurs, and she bends to kiss it, lips pressed over Emma’s breast. Emma inhales, long and deep, and pulls Regina back up, brushing her lips against Regina’s.

 

“You know,” she says, climbing onto a barstool and pulling Regina in between her legs. “When I first saw you here…I was so furious. I saw you with Jacinda and Lucy and I thought that you’d cursed yourself a new family, a better one–” Her voice hitches.

 

Regina clasps her hands over Emma’s cheeks. “Our family,” she reminds her. “It was always our family.”

 

“Ours,” Emma murmurs. Her hands go to Regina’s sides, and Regina kisses her, slow and tender and long as they haven’t been able to in years. Emma reaches up to brush the hair out of her face, and she says, “Heartless me wasn’t kidding, by the way. If you ever want to go back to the sexy bartender look–”

 

Regina pushes her and Emma slips off the chair, laughing, pulling Regina with her as they drop to the floor by the bar together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! You can read more about how to support my writing [here!](http://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee) :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [{Fanart} like a distant star (I simply cannot hold)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12484804) by [regalducky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regalducky/pseuds/regalducky)




End file.
